


The Gale

by Benny_IsA_Dog



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action, Angst, Anxiety, BAMF Pidge | Katie Holt, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extended Metaphors, Fanart, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Illustrations, Injury, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Medical Procedures, Metaphors, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Psychological Trauma, Seizures, Self Confidence Issues, Sentient Voltron Lions, Suspense, Swearing, Whump, graphic depiction of injury response to injury and medical procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:55:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benny_IsA_Dog/pseuds/Benny_IsA_Dog
Summary: Blue moved her muzzle towards them, the top of it reaching far above their heads, her head overwhelming the remaining tunnel. She stopped as close to Lance as she could, hovering the line of her jaw less than a foot from his helmet. Her mind churned forward, unusually strong and loud in Pidge's own mind with boiling pain.  She was a dark, blue cloud reaching for Lance--and he reached back, a blue extension that melded into hers, like he was searching for a second hand to hold.She couldn’t protect her Paladin.Pidge looked into the huge yellow eye that angled down at them. It bored into her.Her strength, her speed, her skills-- none of it would help.She felt Blue’s terror, her helpless anguish.None of it mattered.Pidge pushed harder, but more blood seeped through her fingers.______________Pidge had first come to space to find two people she loved. Instead, with the loss of Shiro, her list of people to save is only growing longer... and everything keeps going wrong.How can she move forward when she's been pushed so far back? How does she hold her world together, when it just keeps falling apart?Set between seasons 2 and 3. (Now illustrated by 91939art.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now illustrated by the amazing 91939art.

  
_I took my power in my hand_    
_And went against the world;_    
_’T was not so much as David had,_    
_But I was twice as bold._    
  
_I aimed my pebble, but myself_    
_Was all the one that fell._    
_Was it Goliath was too large,_  
Or only I too small?

 

\--Emily Dickinson

 

Xxxxxxx

 

In the days after the battle, the Castle was frantic. No one slept, ate, bathed-- there was only more and more desperate searching.

 

But, in the weeks after, the Castle was quiet. Long stretches of empty existence passed in silence.

 

Pidge hermitted herself away in the corner of Green’s hangar that was her workstation. Green would hum to her, both out loud and in her head. Lance stayed with Blue, sitting with her for hours. Sometimes, if Pidge walked by, she could hear him crying. Keith usually disappeared into the bowels of the Castle-- Pidge would only see him when Hunk made them eat, sleep, or just function even a little.  Hunk’s eyes were often red as he herded them to the showers or to their beds. Meals were quiet, gazes kept to their bowls. Allura and Coran would murmur together on the bridge about strategy and next steps, but Allura spent the bulk of the days in her own chambers. Coran regularly stopped by Pidge’s workstation, Blue’s hangar, Hunk’s cluttered kitchen, or would disappear into the Castle--but he rarely said much when he did.

 

And, of course, there was the silence from their fifth Paladin.

 

Sometimes, the silence was placid. More often, though, it screeched into a turbulence that pounded against Pidge’s head and clanged in her ears. Even Green couldn't drown it out, then.

 

Pidge didn't cry-- she'd done enough crying, enough to last her a lifetime--but the screaming silence made her want to scream right back. She hid from the silence in her computer. The punctuations of her typing broke it up with short, staccato interruptions. Reading through lines of code kept her from shouting. She attacked a running rotation of investigations.

 

_Signal from the Black Paladin armor?_

 

(No.)

 

_Ways to track the Black Lion’s teleportation ability?_

 

(No.)

 

_Evidence that the Galra had a new, high-priority prisoner?_

 

(No.)

 

The silence was interrupted on occasion by the Castle alarms. The universe continued on, as usual--it didn’t rest, so neither did its Defenders. At least, what was left of its Defenders.

 

Eventually, small pieces of normalcy crept back into Castle life. Lance began talking more about the various missions they’d completed, and the missions they’d be doing next. He pulled Allura out of her isolation and into detailed conferences. Keith’s disappearances shifted into long stints on the training deck. Team self-care improved to the point that Hunk no longer stalked them through the halls like he was afraid they'd starve to death before they found their way back to the dining room. Coran started telling stories again. Eventually.

 

And, eventually, Pidge expanded her rotation to include questions she’d abandoned since the battle.

 

_Anything she missed in the prison-break video?_

 

(No.)

 

_Reports of sightings of the Black Paladin of Voltron?_

 

(No.)

 

_Reports of other rebel prison-breaks?_

 

(No.)

 

_Any way to enhance the Black Lion's  connection to its Paladin?_

 

(No.)

 

_Records of the other prisoners captured with  “Champion?”_

 

(No.)

 

_..._

 

_...Signal from the Black Paladin armor?_

 

(No.)

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really proud of this work. I hope you guys like it, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Pidge resisted the urge to pop up her holoscreen and find something more interesting to look at. The bridge’s starmap above her had been set at the same vantage point for nearly a varga, and the strategic squiggles Kolivan had traced in an amorphous arc centered on Olkarion really hadn't changed much in that time.

 

Pidge was usually all gung-ho for strategy and plans and whatnot, but the representatives from the latest soon-to-be-liberated planet, Zalkhamar, seemed to have a pathologically nervous attention to detail. Each time Allura or Kolivan explained a step in their plan, the aliens had interrupted with about a million questions. Pidge had started to wonder if they were insulting their competence, but the representatives had otherwise fawned over Team Voltron like they were celebrities. Because of those delays--met with Allura's painstaking diplomatic patience--Pidge was pretty sure this meeting had been going on for, like, forever. Once Allura’s voice had shifted subtly from her “let's murder something together” tone to her “I'm so glad we're friends thanks for coming” tone, signaling the transition from actually important stuff to diplomatic posturing, Pidge had completely checked out.

 

On Pidge's right, Hunk was leaning more and more against the bridge's center display, with a glazed-over softness to his expression. Lance, on the far left, had been gazing lazily at dots on the starmap a good hundred light years from the relevant quadrant for the past five minutes. Even Keith's perpetually disgruntled frown had been incrementally decreasing in intensity. If Allura had noticed the flagging discipline of her Paladins, she had decided that calling them out on it in front of allies would not be in their collective best interest... although fiddling on her holoscreen would probably earn Pidge a well-concealed death glare.

 

Instead, Pidge peered at Zalkhamar, the closest planet to their pseudo-base of Olkarion-- pretending like she _wasn't_ nearly bored to tears. Her eyes hopped to the next planet in their plan, then the next, and on down the line before completing the wide wedge that carved into the flank of the Empire. Then she followed the line around again, which hopefully made it look like she was thinking about something useful.

 

It would have really helped if they had gotten to sit in chairs. She eyed Kolivan, wondering how he and the other Blade seemed entirely content to stand the whole day. Just as Pidge had started examining the anatomy of Kolivan's knee, Allura's tone changed again.

 

“I thank you again, Senators,” she said, “I hope this meeting has reaffirmed your confidence in our alliance. We will meet again in two quintants, at the completion of the first stage of our operation.”

 

Pidge quickly re-focused her attention to Kolivan’s face. She heard Hunk exhale quietly in relief. The two poor Olkarions that had shown up also looked grateful for the reprieve.

 

“Thank you, Princess,” replied one of the spindly Zalkhamarans, bowing with impressive flexibility nearly to the floor.

 

“Coran will escort you back to your ships while we make our final preparations.” Coran stepped up from his place behind Allura with a giant smile, and a few more dramatic bows were exchanged.

 

Coran escorted the civilians out, chatting about the finer details in the Castle architecture they passed, leaving Allura and the Paladins with the two Blades of Marmora--Kolivan, and whoever was this week’s iteration of his masked sidekick.

 

The instant the door closed behind the Olkarions, Lance about-faced and plopped bonelessly into his command chair. Pidge, giving up any pretense that she was a Responsible Grown-Up, dropped to the floor where she stood with a groan. If she hadn’t stretched out so that she was lying on her back and staring at the ceiling, she was positive she would see Allura's look of disapproval. Pidge ignored her. She had stopped trying to impress the stuck-up Blades ages ago. And, anyway, her feet hurt.

 

“Well, my afternoon plans are ruined,” sighed Hunk.

 

Somewhere behind her, Lance made a noise of discontented agreement. “I swear they were playing a word game or something that we weren't in on.”

 

Pidge heard the center display retract somewhere near her feet as Allura turned it off. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Keith rubbing his face like he'd just woken up from a nap.

 

“Are there any more points you'd like to go over?” Allura’s disembodied voice asked the Blades.

 

“The Empire systems have been upgraded in response to the repeated intelligence gathering done by both Voltron and the Blades of Marmora,” said Kolivan, “Are you sure you will be able to circumvent their security?”

 

Lance scoffed on Pidge's behalf.

 

“Easy, peasy,” said Pidge, holding her hand out above her and waving it dismissively in the direction of Kolivan's voice. “Sometimes they try something new, but it’s never anything too complicated. The Empire IT guys really aren't all that imaginative.”

 

“I have the utmost confidence in the Green Paladin’s abilities,” cut in Allura, more properly, “She will be able to deactivate the Empire's communications in the area in the allotted time frame. Anything else?”

 

Kolivan didn’t answer. Pidge lifted her head to look at him. His expression was hard, but Allura waited him out with icy, uncomfortable silence.

 

Finally, he broke. “This mission would not need to be so intricate if you were able to form Voltron.”

 

Pidge's eyebrows shot up. She managed to stop herself from saying “no shit” out loud.

 

Lance sat up in his chair, one eyebrow raised skeptically. He glanced at the other Paladins, as if searching for clarification, before looking back at Kolivan in disbelief. “Uuuuh, yeah… But, you know, we _can't?”_

 

“And that must be remedied.”

 

Slowly, Pidge lifted herself from the floor.  She examined Kolivan's posture, his face--but he gave no hint as to where he was leading.

 

“ Right ,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “We've been _working_ on that.”

 

“Yeah, we've been putting out feelers any time we so much as _look_ at an inhabited planet,” said Hunk, wiggling his fingers in front of him on the word “feelers.” “And we've been digging into every possible lead we've found.”

 

Kolivan looked distinctly unimpressed. “We cannot continue to move forward like this without Voltron.Time is of the essence.”

 

“Well,” Keith snapped, crossing his arms, “ maybe we would have _found_ Shiro by now if you were still _helping_ us.”

 

Kolivan gave him a sharp look. “The Black Paladin has been missing for movements, and the likelihood of him being found alive decreases with every quintant. I have made the decision to focus the Blade of Marmora's efforts on more...fruitful endeavors.”

 

Pidge stiffened. Her irritation became a tight line of rage.

 

Keith bristled, shoulders rising and hands clenching into fists. “Just because _you've_ given up on him doesn't mean _we_ have.”

 

“And, meanwhile, the Coalition is without it's most powerful weapon .” Kolivan's voice rose in volume. “It is time Voltron finds a new Paladin to pilot the Black Lion.”

 

There was a stunned pause, leaving Pidge listening to only the fury of blood rushing in her ears. She looked up at Allura, waiting for her to step in, to take charge-- to shut down Kolivan the way she did with any pompous asshole they had the displeasure to meet. Allura was glaring at Kolivan with a ferocity that would shatter a lesser person--but she didn't _say_ anything. The line of rage widened into a tumbling, burning fire. Pidge turned back to Kolivan and scowled directly into his weird yellow eyes.

 

“What the hell are you _talking_ about?” she demanded. Her own fists were clenched, now. “Shiro _is_ the Black Paladin-- we can't _replace_ him! We've been putting all the resources we can into looking for him!” She'd started shouting. “We’ve been doing _everything_ \--”

 

“And have you made any progress?” he interrupted.

 

(No.)

 

Pidge's words froze in her throat, the fire turned to ice. The air punched out of her lungs. The rest of her was heavy, drawn down with the weight of thick, dark mud. As Kolivan watched her, she struggled to maintain her scowl. Her brain revved to scrape together _something_ to snap back with--some example, some proof hiding in the back-most recesses of her memory.

 

Because he was wrong. She  _knew_ he was wrong. They'd find Shiro. They'd find him, wherever he was.

 

They were looking. Shewas looking.

 

_She was looking--_

 

Kolivan’s eyes narrowed. “I thought not.”

 

Pidge groped for her voice, for control over her body-- tried to rebundle her rage into something pointed and lethal.

 

But before she could so much as swear at Kolivan, Keith took a stiff step forward. “No! We're not giving up-- we're still looking for him!”

 

“You are putting all we have accomplished at risk. The Empire is weak, we cannot waste time on sentimental--”

 

_“HE’S NOT A WASTE OF TIME!_ ”

 

Keith stormed across the bridge, up to Kolivan. The second Blade stepped out--in an offensive stance, reaching for their knife, moving towards Keith's exposed flank. Pidge narrowed her focus onto the Blade. She reached for her bayard, activated it, placed her foot in the first motion of a charge--

 

(No.)

 

Her body jerked to the left, splattering her focus across the bridge, and she was wrenched to a halt.

 

She whipped her head around. Allura's hand was wrapped around her bicep in her iron grip, the rest of her still and stone-like at her station. Pidge's betrayed confusion came out as a furious, frantic growl. She twisted her weight into Allura's hand in a hopeless attempt to break away-- to defend her team from the threat _right in front of them -_ -

 

\--but the bridge was still.

 

The second Blade hadn't moved more than the single step from his original position. Keith had stopped inches in front of Kolivan, face set in a snarl aimed at the face towering a few feet above it, body set in a warning to the body more than twice its weight. Lance had jumped up from his chair, and he and Hunk held their hands over where their bayards would materialize--but neither had rushed after Keith. While Keith projected deadly intent, Kolivan only stared down at him callously, disgusted, like the whole display had annoyed him.

 

Pidge wanted to _scream._

 

The bridge stayed still for one tick... two ticks.

 

Three ticks….

 

Four ticks….

 

“I think that will be all,” said Allura, curtly, but calmly-- _calmly--_ “We will be in contact.”

 

“Princess.” Kolivan gave her a small, stiff nod. Without sparing another glance at Pidge or Keith, he and the other Blade turned and exited the room.

 

Allura relaxed her grip. Keith broke his stance, yelling a loud, furius stream of obscenities. He paced across the bridge, hands in fists, as if to find something to break.

 

“ _Keith,”_ Allura admonished.

 

Pidge wheeled to face her, wrenching her arm away. “No! You don't get to lecture us! What the hell _was_ that? Why’d you just _let_ him say that crap _?_ ”

 

“Pidge, calm down,” said Hunk, holding his hands up placatingly.

 

She turned to glare at him instead. “ _No!_ He told us to stop looking for Shiro! To _replace_ him--” She gestured angrily at Allura. “--and she just _stood_ there!”

 

“I was not about to start a full-out _brawl_ in my command room with our _allies.”_

 

“Well, you should have done _something_ , instead of practically agreeing that he’s fucking _dead_ \--!”

 

Keith roared an angry, wordless yell. He stormed out the door at close to a run. A second later, Lance followed, muttering about making sure he didn't make everything worse by going after Kolivan.

 

Allura turned away. She didn't look at Pidge. Instead, she summoned her chair and dropped into it, pressing her face into her hands. She suddenly looked so _tired._

 

Well, Pidge _hoped_ she felt tired. She was done with this--done with _her_. Hunk tried to lay a hand on Pidge's shoulder, but she shook him away.

 

“I'm going to my hanger,” she spat. She stomped out of the bridge, only slowing slightly to circumnavigate a concerned--albeit confused- looking--Coran in the hallway.

 

A few minutes later, she opened the door to Green’s hanger. The presence that had been poking at the back of her head since she'd first started yelling pummeled out to meet her.  Green greeted Pidge with a wall of her energy, curling around and sinking inside of her to bump against her seething rage. Pidge didn't approach her. Instead, she went straight to the corner where her laptop was waiting on her desk. Without bothering to sit down, she pulled up the reports detailing all the activity on the Castle’s long-distance scanners.

 

_Signal from the Black Paladin armor?_

 

_…_

 

(No.)

 

Pidge slammed her fists into the table.

 

No. No, of course there hadn't been any updates--she was being ridiculous. She had long ago set every alarm in the Castle to go off at full volume if that signal were detected. If the Black Paladin armor were found, the entire surrounding quadrant would probably hear about it. She rubbed at her eyes.

 

Green sent her a pointed wave of concern. Pidge tried to tell her she was fine, but Green was smarter than that. In a little spiral of sensation, she offered--with full sincerity, as far as Pidge could tell-- to go and blast whoever was bothering her out of the sky, if Pidge wanted her to.

 

Pidge let out a short, startled laugh, enjoying the image of the giant Lion tracking down anyone who'd ever pissed her off.The Garrison probably wouldn't even be functional after such a decimation to its staff. Her amusement earned a small, happy spark from Green.

 

Pidge pulled out the desk chair and sat down. She shifted in place a few times, then pulled off several pieces of armor that restricted her ability to curl up on the seat, tossing them loudly to the floor. Settled, she eyed the laptop's screen.

 

She opened the large library of data files the Blades had collected through their stealth missions or network of spies. The cursor blinked rhythmically at the front of the command line….

 

She entered commands to begin a new search.

 

_Logs of rebel group activity?_

 

(No.)

 

Not enough details to find a pattern or follow a lead.

 

_Galra prisoner records?_

 

(No.)

 

Nothing she hadn't already combed through.

 

It was no more than she'd expecting-- day after day of searches had come up with nothing-- but the wave of disappointment was no less painful. Pidge drummed her knuckles against the desk with--maybe--an unnecessary amount of force. She pressed her forehead into her hand. As she sat, the disappointment settled, sank a little deeper. It became something a little heavier and a little darker-- and a little harder to hold in.

 

She hesitated. Then, she reached for the keyboard again.

 

_Average turnover of prisoners in Galra work camps?_

 

Too short.

 

_Estimated rebel casualties in encounters with the Empire?_

 

Too many.

 

_...Size of the known universe?_

 

Too large.

 

Green eased in front of her train of thought and gently persuaded her to stop.

 

xxx

 

The next morning, the Paladins were tasked with escorting a series of refugee vessels headed to Olkarion. Pidge flew Green through some extra spins and loop-de-loops along the way.

 

(Because no one could tell her she couldn't.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art by the amazing 91939art.](https://91939art.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Long meetings are boring. 
> 
> Kudos are as wonderful as summer evenings. Comments are summer evenings with the added benefit of wearing bug spray.


	3. Chapter 3

“Can't we just shoot it?”

 

Lance was looking through the Blue Lion's eye screens down at the massive satellite dish resting on the surface of the rocky mountain beneath them. Pidge stood behind him, holding onto the pilot's chair.

 

“I mean,” Lance continued, “I know we _can't--_ but it would be _soooo_ much easier. And more fun.”

 

Pidge could almost hear an eye roll coming from the cockpit of the Red Lion.

 

“Ah, well, we're not going to let that ruin our mood, are we, Blue?” he declared, patting the console lovingly, “Not when we've got our special job to do!”

 

He grabbed both central controls and thrust them forward. The cockpit shivered with the weird, Lion-magic feeling, indicating the appearance of Blue's sonic cannon above them. There was a lurch as Blue roared and activated a scan.Within seconds, the results popped up on the main screen. The majority of the communication base’s mechanical and electrical components were tucked in the mountain beneath the dish itself, as expected. A small control room could be seen in the very center, with a single long tunnel snaking away to a hidden entrance a few hundred yards along the slope. Pretty simple.

 

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Lance, dryly. He pressed a few buttons to send the images to Coran and Allura in the Castle, who were waiting to provide supporting fire for the Red and Yellow Lions. Once Pidge deactivated the dish, which served as the primary communication relay station for the area, Keith, Hunk, and the Blades would take out the bare-bones Galra military presence on Zalkhamar, a few planets over. The relay station was on a barren little subplanet and completely automated. If all went well, it would take the rest of the Empire a couple of quintants to figure out exactly what had happened, and the station could be used as much-needed infrastructure for the Coalition.

 

“Ah, yes,” said Coran through the comms, “That seems rather straightforward.”

 

“Yeah,” said Pidge, “Looks like we just need to get through the front door, and then we're good until we get to the control room itself.”

 

“All right, then, go on ahead.”

 

“Heading down!”

 

Lance landed Blue on a flat-enough section of the mountain close to the entrance, and Pidge and Lance exited to stand on the gravelly surface. The door was moderately hidden behind a lip of rock a little ways up the slope, but it was hard to miss from the ground. After a short but athletic scramble, they came to stand next to it.

 

The door was the usual uninspired Galra metal, about twenty by twenty feet and built directly into the side of the mountain. An activation panel off to the side blinked on at the their motion. Pidge went straight to it, pulling up a holoscreen on her gauntlet. She connected into the security system without a problem, then started an override of the identification feature of the control panel. In a few minutes--during all of which Lance stood annoying close to peer over her shoulder-- she had shut off the alarms and security measures set to trigger at any sign of forced entry into the base.

 

Pidge closed her holoscreen with a satisfying beep. “Done,” she said, and stepped back. With a hint of low vindication, she added “Easy peasy.”

 

“Lemon squeezy.” She accepted Lance’s offered fist bump.

 

Pidge placed her hand against the panel, and the door retracted up into the rock. Beyond, there was a wide hallway lined with the same Galra metal. Purple lights lit up in pairs on either side, illuminating the tunnel shown by the scan. It cut deep into the mountain before narrowing out of sight. For caution’s sake, they both drew their bayards and crossed in.

 

The door was bracketed by a pair of inert sentries in a standby state, and additional sentries were posted every hundred feet or so. They continued down the tunnel, for probably two hundred yards, before reaching the second door, which opened at Pidge's touch. Inside, the control room was a simple affair with a single wall of screens and buttons and a sole sentry standing off to one side, waiting for direction. The whole place was abysmally small, not meant to be occupied for more than a few vargas at a time.

 

Pidge dematerialized her bayard and approached the center computer. She turned it on and entered the communication mainframe, digging through the layers of code. With a few button presses, the base was no longer relaying Empire frequencies.

 

“Phase one: complete,” she said into the comms.

 

“Copy,” said Allura, “Begin phase two.” There was a flurry of chatter as she began directing Hunk and Keith into the attack.

 

Lance leaned casually against the back wall. “This is a lot easier with you around.”

 

“Damn straight,” Pidge muttered. She kept typing, setting up a dummy transmission to make it look like all was well.

 

She had begun finishing up and was almost ready to exit the system when the screen blanked out and flashed red.

 

“Ah, fuck,” she hissed.

 

The lights out the ceiling blinked on and off, and an alarm wailed from the entire console. In the corner of her eye, the sentry jerked to life with a burst of purple. She whirled around, but it was hit in the chest by a shot of blue light before it could move enough to even lift its blaster.

 

“Shit!” Lance swore, holding his own blaster.

 

“Uuuuh, did something happen?” Hunk's voice asked through her helmet.

 

Pidge turned back to the computer and connected to it through her gauntlet screen. “There’s another layer of security-- linked to the software. I missed it.”

 

She'd _missed_ it.

 

She found the program for the second security network, but the computer blocked her first attempt to cancel it. A low rumbling came from the tunnel, metal on metal--the rest of the sentries.

 

“I've got the door!” Lance shouted.

 

A second, altered attempt to cancel failed with an extra warning blinking across the screens. Behind her, Lance's bayard shot off a rapid volley. She tried a third time. Lance swore before releasing another string of fire.

 

The flashing continued. “ _Damn it!”_

 

“I think that was all of them!”  Lance shouted over the sirens, “We saw, what, like twenty of them?”

 

“I think so!” Pidge looked around at him. “We’re still broadcasting fake signals, but someone might be alerted to the alarm trip and come check it out.”

 

He nodded. “Right--I’ll get to Blue.” He sprinted out the door.

 

The alarms continued to blare, flashing purple and red in a disorienting strobe. She tried another approach-- probing from a different angle. Denied. It was blocking her out. She could hear the others scrambling to regroup for a potential second front of attack centered on the communication station, or for an early discovery of their activity on Zalkhamar. Lance was breathing loud and fast into his mic as he ran.

 

A fifth attempt--

 

The alarms stopped, and something _slammed_ behind her. She turned, drawing her bayard. But instead of the opening Lance had disappeared into, there was only a continuation of solid wall--the door had closed. The screens, now frozen mid-blink, cast slanted red shadows across it. Pidge crossed the room and smacked at the access panel. Of course, it stayed sealed.

 

Lance made a startled noise, like he'd had to stop suddenly.

 

“Pidge?” he asked urgently, panting, “The exit closed off-- was that you?”

 

“No,” she said, glancing at the computers. “No, that wasn't me.”

 

“Oh.” Lance managed to sound both like he was completely unfazed and on the verge of an emotional crisis in the same syllable. “...Well, great.”

 

“Um...this is probably another step in the security system.” Pidge made herself go back to the console and reconnected her gauntlet computer. “It was probably triggered after the sentries went down.”

 

“Sooo…what can I do?”

 

Pidge tapped through the multiple holoscreens now sprouting from her wrist-- and was again kicked out. “ _Fuck_ \--uh, hang tight, I guess? The security program is still running, and it won't let me--”

 

_BOM_

 

A surge of sound split loud and tinny through the comms. The real, physical sound wave slammed into Pidge an instant later, so powerful she could _feel_ it, knocking her to the side.

 

 _“Agh!”_  

 

She sidestepped to catch herself and grabbed at the sides of her helmet in an reflexive attempt to protect her ears. An awful, reverberating loop of feedback rang through the comms for a painful second, driving into her head and pounding into her skull.

 

Pidge ripped the helmet off and threw it away. She dug at her ears, which started to fill with a high, screeching ringing. Just barely, she could hear sharp punctuations of dialogue over the phantom sound.  She forced herself to drop her hands and retrieved her helmet from where it had landed next to the ruins of the first sentry.

 

“-- _was that?”_

 

_“Pidge! Lance!”_

 

_“Pidge! Lance! Come in-- what happened? Please respond!”_

 

Pidge had to concentrate to discriminate individual words. “I'm here! I'm here-- I don't know what that was.”

 

“Lance?” That sounded like it was maybe Hunk.

 

For a handful of heartbeats, Pidge only heard her own pulse forming a morbid harmony to the wavering ringing. Then--

 

(No.)

 

Lance screamed.

 

“ _Lance!”_  Multiple voices. Pidge rammed herself against the door, slamming her hand on the panel.

 

The scream cut off quickly, with a choking gasp, like Lance was trying to stifle it. Pidge activated her bayard and punched the point into the door, embedding it to the hilt.

 

“Lance? Can you tell me what's happening?” Coran, probably.

 

She tried to push down her growing desperation enough to hold her bayard steady. She pulled it down with both hands, the energy blade slowly melting a cut through the door as it went. She could hear Lance breathing, now. Much too fast, much too loud-- but he didn't answer Coran. Pidge leaned into the hilt, putting all of her weight into its progress to the floor. It lurched down as it reached the minute crack of open space at the bottom of the threshold.

 

“Lance, my boy, can you hear me?”

 

Pidge started a second cut from the top of the first and all but climbed onto her bayard. Allura was talking now-- something to Coran. Hunk and Keith were yelling between one another.

 

Lance took a series of choppy gasps.

 

The second cut reached the floor, forming a smoldering inverted “v” into the door. Shd dropped to the floor onto her side, recoiled her leg, and kicked the flat of her boot against the bottom of the slice with a rabid grunt.  It peeled back, and a second kick pushed it out enough to fit Pidge's shoulders. She flipped around and army-crawled into the new opening.

 

“ _Yes!_ I'm out-- I'm going to him!”

 

The hallway was bathed in more of the red glow of the warning lights. Beyond the score of sentries Lance had dispatched that littered the floor, there were ragged holes cut into both sides of the walls where the metal had been ripped away, revealing small cavities in the stone underneath where explosives had been placed. The remnants of the overlying metal were strewn about the corridor, in some places embedded into the walls, floor, and ceiling. Pidge jumped to her feet, then over a sentry, and took off running. She nearly tripped over a larger piece of shrapnel. Belatedly, she activated her shield.

 

“Lance! I’m coming!” she yelled, willing him to hear her.

 

The tunnel was dark, extending ahead into a red nothing that continued on and on and on. But _,_ finally, a point of faint teal glow broke apart from the emptiness.

 

“I see you!” Pidge shouted. The glow abruptly bloomed into the blue and white of Lance's armor. He lay curled on his side, several yards from the outer door. He bodily flinched as she barreled closer. “Lance! It's me!”

 

Lance was grabbing at his leg, his armor pocked with scuffs and dents. Metal shards lay scattered across the floor around him.

 

...And there was a stain of dark liquid that stretched away and away and away from his leg.

 

Pidge slid to her knees, into the black pool, to skid to his side. She could see Lance's face, now, through his helmet-- a mask of horrible pain that she could never have imagined on him before.

 

She sucked in a breath.

 

The source of the blood was obscured by his hands, desperately gripping around his thigh. Pidge leaned over him and dragged one hand away. His armor had been pierced in the weak point where the hard shell met the aramid undersuit at the top of the thigh.  Layers of muscle and tissue were visible in a gruesome, grisly mess--cut as a heavy piece of metal had plunged through, then ripped as gravity had pulled it back out. Blood pulsed in a steady stream-- from muscle, from the sheen of bone underneath, and, in a deluge, from a thick artery severed completely through.

 

The forward-most part of Pidge’s self faded into a distant, blank _absence_. A different part-- the analytical part, the part that was usually regulated to tick quietly in the background-- began pulling for bits and pieces of applicable information it had ever stored away, telling her to push on Lance's hip to roll him onto his back. At the movement, he screamed and tried to curl in on himself. She watched herself force his hands away and push him back down.

 

The shouts continued over the comms. The ringing had faded to a quieter peal, but Pidge didn't have enough space left to interpret what the others were saying.

 

Pidge grabbed Lance's calf and lifted it onto her shoulder. She pressed on the upper side of the cut, centering her hand over where the blood seemed to be flowing the fastest. Lance _shrieked_ and tried to pull at her fingers, but she fought him back with a disconnected brutality.

 

And then, there was nothing else to do. Nothing but listen to Lance crying out and gasping. Nothing but watch blood gather on her gloves.

 

Nothing but _think._

 

(Tick, tick, tick.)

 

The calculating side of her noticed the size of the dark puddle on the floor.

 

It noticed Lance could barely wrap his fingers around hers, that his breathing was getting faster and faster, that his skin was getting whiter and whiter.

 

It noticed she couldn't move him without making everything worse, and, even if she could, she couldn't take him anywhere without a ship or her Lion.

 

(A wave of dread swelled from somewhere deep inside her. It pulled the absent part of Pidge up with it, pushing her against the separation her mind had built for her, trying to break it down.)

 

It noticed the bleeding wasn't slowing.

 

(Pidge gave way. A failed dam.)

 

“I can't help him,” she whispered into the comms. “I can't help him.”

                 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn straight. 
> 
> Depicting Lance as a competent Paladin but also beating the shit outta him in the same scene is difficult.
> 
> Kudos are like when my dogs cuddle with me in bed. Comments are like when they cuddle with me in bed, but also stop fidgeting so we can all fall asleep. 
> 
> What did you guys think?


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

Pidge watched as a rivulet escaped her fingers, black in the red light. It dripped to join the puddle at her knees.

 

“Pidge--tell me what's going on,” said Coran, evenly.

 

Her mouth felt dry. “He’s… he's bleeding.”

 

Lance's eyes were squeezed shut. His rapid breathes caught in a gasp, then continued even more shallowly. His hands fell away from her grip to grab more limply at the floor.

 

“Coran--he's _bleeding_.”

 

Lance was _bleeding_. He was hurt--he needed _help._

 

(And she couldn't help him.)

 

“All right, Pidge-- where is he bleeding from?”

 

She tried to think through an answer, but each thought evaporated before she could solidify them into words.

 

(She couldn't help him.)

 

Lance looked at her. His pupils were wide, and small drops of sweat gathered in beads across his forehead . He lifted his hand, not towards the wound, but towards where she had the leg propped on her shoulder. She leaned the leg against her neck and let go. She held his hand.

 

(He looked so scared.)

 

The ground shook. There was a roar--loud and mechanical, unmistakable even though the stone of the mountain. Pidge could feel the fear, the anger behind it.

 

“Pidge?” Coran prompted.

 

“I...” Pidge tried, “I can't--”

 

Four huge claws slammed through the middle of the door. Pidge flinched, hunching over Lance. The claws hooked down and pulled, dragging the door with them and flooding the tunnel with the yellow light of the nearby sun.  Pidge saw only a brief flash of sky before the Blue Lion wedged a corner of her massive lower jaw into the new opening. With a rumbling, horrible snarl, she tore the overlying rock up and away, revealing Pidge and Lance to the air. She dumped it onto the slope outside.

 

Blue moved her muzzle towards them, the top of it reaching far above their heads, her head overwhelming the remaining tunnel. She stopped as close to Lance as she could, hovering the line of her jaw less than a foot from his helmet. Her mind churned forward, unusually strong and loud in Pidge's own mind with boiling pain.  She was a dark, blue cloud reaching for Lance--and he reached back, a blue extension that melded into hers, like he was searching for a second hand to hold. Her desperation was a series of ocean waves crashing unrelenting into the beach--her fear a stark, deadly cold. Her anger was a river tumbling through its ravine, slamming into rock with a force that carved mountains.

 

She couldn’t protect her Paladin.

 

Pidge looked into the huge yellow eye that angled down at them. It bored into her--with the intensity of the universe's greatest weapon, with the magnitude of millennia.

 

Her strength, her speed, her skills-- none of it would help.

 

She felt Blue’s terror, her helpless anguish.

 

None of it mattered.

 

Pidge pushed harder, but more blood seeped through her fingers.

 

 

“ _I can’t help him_ ,” she repeated, yelling, now. In the natural light, the blood was bright red-- on her hands, her chest, her knees, on the ground.  “ _Please_ \-- I can’t help him! Somebody-- _please--”_

 

“Pidge!” shouted Allura, “Coran is on his way--he’s almost there!”

 

Pidge barely heard her. There was so much red, and Lance looked so white.

 

“ _Please_ \-- he needs help, I can’t do _anything_ \--”

 

“Pidge? Did you hear that?” tried Hunk, “Coran’s almost there!”

 

Lance’s breaths were coming impossibly fast, his lungs not quite getting enough air. He'd gone lax against the floor, no longer able to guard against the pain.  Blue’s mind crept over and through Pidge’s own and thrashed against it.

 

“ _Please_...” Her gaze fell on the macabre mess of muscle and under-armor beneath her hand.

 

“Pidge? I've just landed the pod, I'm coming up to you, now.”  

 

She latched onto Coran's words, trying to make herself believe them. Coran was coming--someone else was coming. He babbled through his communicator, detailing his progress up the slope and around Blue's feet. She knew he was trying to keep her calm, but the stream of prattle didn't quite sink in far enough to reach her.

 

Suddenly, Coran was there, appearing between Blue’s chin and the edge of the remaining tunnel. Then, he was next to her, gently extracting her from beneath Lance's leg-- telling her what a good job she'd done and that everything would be okay.

 

(He sounded just like her dad did when he would soothe her when she was scared.)

 

She found herself by Lance's side, watching as Coran kneeled next to her and carefully examined the wound. She was still holding Lance's hand, and it jerked each time Coran perturbed the injured tissues, joined by a few weak gasps.Coran opened a small case that he pulled from his pocket and dug out a little coil. He held lowered it, positioned it precisely next to the severed artery--

 

“Hold his hands, please,” he said, grimly.

 

\--and plunged it deep into the wall of the open wound, towards the pelvis.

 

Lance _screamed_. He twisted, trying free his leg. Pidge only just caught his other hand before he could grab for Coran's arm. Blue’s waves hit against Pidge harder, and a distant part of Pidge marveled that the Lion didn't kill her and Coran right there.

 

Coran moved quickly. He scooped Lance under his shoulders and knees and lifted him easily. Pidge was pulled up with Lance's hands, following them mechanically, but had to let go when Coran turned and started running. With a loud groan, Blue lifted her head to let them pass. Coran darted lithely from the tunnel to the slope, and Pidge tailed behind. Lance had stopped struggling, although each step jostled him against Coran's arms. His pained panting was duplicated in the comms, making a turbulent onslaught of sound that meshed with the pounding of Blue’s mind. Pidge's thoughts were drowned in the combined, chaotic downpour they created. A transport pod waited not far down the incline. Coran guided her into the front passenger seat before sitting at the main controls, Lance in his lap. Pidge ended up cradling Lance’s head on her knees as they took off. They left Blue behind, but her tumult didn't grow any quieter.

 

Keith, Allura, and Hunk were talking again. Coran said something back. The pod left the thin atmosphere, and the Red Lion pulled up to fly next to them, her flank filling half the viewport. In the other half, the Castle was a small white dot slowly getting larger. Lance had shut his eyes again, but each of his short inhales moved him slightly against Pidge’s leg. The sound of each breath echoed in the air, the comms, her head….

 

Green’s presence steadily swelled at the back of Pidge's awareness. She was full of urgency, worry, alarm. She reached for Pidge-- she tried to break through this strange, icy wall enclosing her Paladin--but Pidge couldn't figure out how to let her in.

 

Minutes later--ages later--they landed in one of the Castle's auxiliary hangers. Coran pulled Lance from her and took off running with him in the direction of the medical bay. Pidge raced after him, because she couldn't come up with any other ideas. Keith joined them, swearing, as they passed the confluence of hallways from Red’s hanger and their own. At some point, he came running back to Pidge and picked her up like a toddler. She must've fallen behind, or stopped. She hadn't noticed.

 

(She clung to Keith while he ran, just like she did to Matt when she was little, when he would swing her around to make her laugh.)

 

In the med bay, Keith set her on the shallow steps facing the arc of cryopods. He left her to help Coran, who had Lance on a hovering clinical bed he’d procured in the middle of the room.

 

Lance cried out as Keith shifted him to remove his armor. He cried out even louder when Coran carefully extracted the pieces of undersuit clotted into his leg.

 

The comms crackled as Hunk told them they were done on Zalkhamar and he was coming back.

 

Allura’s voice boomed as she announced something important over the intercom.

 

Blue roared and cried in her head, even over the distance, with heartbroken, deafening pain.

 

Green pounded against the shell Pidge was trapped in, trying to make her hear her.

 

...And the sound of Lance’s breathing carried over it all. A strained, irregular rhythm that threatened to fall to disarray.

 

It carried over Pidge's loud and heavy heartbeat.

 

Over the clatter of armor being dropped, abandoned, on the floor.

 

Over Keith’s shouting.

 

Over the beeping of a holoscreen as Coran initialized the healing programs.

 

Over the urgent directions between them both as they moved Lance from the cot.

 

Over the _swish_ of the cryopod door as it activated--

 

\--and then it was gone.

 

Blue settled to a whisper as her Paladin was suspended in unconscious healing. Coran went to one side to watch the displays monitoring his vitals. Keith stood in front of the pod, his expression of dazed shock reflecting in its surface.

 

It was silent.

 

Pidge sat, frozen, staring at her hands. Her gloves were encased in a ruddy labyrinth of drips and clots, making them feel heavy and alien. Her gauntlets were streaked with a red that _shouldn't_ have been there.

 

Silence.

 

Green tried to call to her.

 

Silence. Pidge wanted it to _stop_.

 

Her hands were shaking. All of her was shaking.

 

 _She wanted it to stop_.

 

Pidge jumped to her feet. She stumbled to the med bay door, fumbling as she tried to open it. Someone called her name--but then she was through.

 

And she was _running._

 

Her boots slapped against the floor of the corridor in an unrestrained sprint. She ran blindly, unable to _think,_ and had to trust her body to follow the familiar route to Green's hanger. Soon, her lungs and legs and gut began to burn-- but she didn't slow down. She _couldn't_.

 

(There would only be more silence if she did.)

 

Green sent her a feeling of _calm_ \--begging her to wait, begging her not to panic _._ It didn't make it through the shell. Pidge slammed into the hanger door on her hands. She hit its activation panel _hard_ and slid herself through as soon as it opened enough to fit her. Green tried to be a wall of soothing presence to meet her, but the worry and shared pain was too large and imposing beneath it. Pidge ran to the workstation. She opened her computer. Her gloves smeared the keyboard with clotting blood.

 

_Signal from the Black Paladin armor?_

 

…

 

(No.)

 

Pidge grabbed the laptop and threw it as hard as she could. It crashed into the nearby wall.

 

Parts of the screen and casing shattered--pieces scattered in every direction like jagged little knives. She stood still, gasping, staring at the ruins. She was shaking harder than ever. Creeping vines of Green slipped over and into the shell. She cracked and snapped it open, like a sapling slowly splitting boulders. Pidge's eyes began to feel hot and wet. But Pidge didn't _want_ to cry. She'd done enough crying--enough crying to last a lifetime. She wanted to be _strong_ \--

 

(No.)

 

\--but a tear fell onto her cheek, anyway. It rolled to her chin.

 

Pidge collapsed to her knees, ripping off her helmet to wipe at her face with wet hands. She couldn't stop it.

 

 _It was okay. It was okay to cry._ Green wrapped around her, tight and close, and held her. Pidge cried.

 

Hunk found her like this--crumpled on the floor, with face, arms, and knees bloodied with someone else's blood. She didn't hear him come in-- she didn't notice him until he was next to her, pulling her into his lap and hugging her against his shoulder. She let him support her in his arms, like a pillar of stone holding her above the churning chaos that she was.

 

But Pidge didn't _want_ Hunk. She wanted _Lance_ , because that would mean he didn't need to be in the cryopod. And she wanted her _dad_ , because he'd always been there to comfort and fix whenever anything went wrong.  She wanted _Matt,_ because he understood her better than anyone else in the entire universe. And she wanted _Shiro_ , because he'd done his best to fill the roles of friend and brother and leader and father…and the roles of her strength and her direction and her _hope--_

 

“I can't help them, Hunk,” she sobbed, “I can't help them.”

 

Tears and blood joined to fall into a slowly turning storm of red, white, and yellow that dripped down his armor.

 

“I can't help anyone.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art by the amazing 91939art.](https://91939art.tumblr.com/)
> 
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> 
> I think this chapter is one of the greater achievements of my life so far. 
> 
> I'm going to start posting a chapter every day-- because the work is done and I'm impatient. 
> 
> Shout out to everyone that have left comments! Hearing your good thoughts is fantastic for my mental health.


	5. Chapter 5

 

_In this short Life that only lasts an hour_

_How much - how little - is within our power_

\--Emily Dickinson

 

Xxxxxxx

 

Pidge cried into Hunk's arms for a long, long while. Time stretched and shrank unevenly from moment to moment.

 

After the first few minutes or so, Hunk whispered into the comms, confirming to the others that she was with him. Then, he let her cry in place for what felt like hours, until she was effete and exhausted and could do nothing but lie limply against his chest.

 

When that happened, he held her around her back and butt and carried her back to the med bay, each step rocking her gently. Hunk helped her out of her armor while Coran scanned her with a hand-held device for any unnoticed injuries from the explosion. Someone procured a set of her clothes, and Coran whisked away her drying gloves and undersuit.  

 

Pidge must've fallen asleep soon after that.

 

She woke curled on her side, facing a confusing series of shapes illuminated by the dim teal of the med bay’s nighttime lights. Green’s energy was a blanket of moss draping over her, warm and comforting. But further down, rooted in Pidge's gut, there was a dense, sickly disquiet.  If she concentrated on it, Pidge could feel it creeping through her insides--to her chest, then out to her arms and legs--making them hurt with a dark, abstract pain .

 

The dim shapes in front of her pieced together to become the large figure of Hunk, sleeping deeply next to her on his back with his mouth wide open. They were lying on a row of the medical beds, shoved together and set low to the floor. She could see the faint outline of Lance's features in the cryopod at their feet. Rolling quietly to her other side, she found Keith laying facing away from her, using his arm as a second pillow. Beyond him, Allura slept sitting against the wall, resting her head against Coran’s shoulder, who was tapping away quietly on a tablet.

 

Pidge turned back over before Coran could see she was awake. She curled around the hurting in her abdomen. It made her feel fragile, like she would fall in on herself at any second.

 

Green rippled in denial. _Strong_ , she insisted.

 

Pidge curled even tighter. “Green,” she whispered. The word was wound with frail pleading. What Pidge was pleading for, though, she didn't exactly know.  “I don’t feel strong.”

 

Xxxxxxxxxx

 

Allura activated the bridge holoscreen and began a hail to the Blade of Marmora.

 

Pidge, Keith, Hunk, and Coran waited at their respective stations. Lance, it had been decided, would be filled in with details of the conference later. He’d come out of the cryopod after less than twelve vargas, since replenishing blood and stitching up soft tissue was apparently a relatively easy fix. This left the Coalition plenty of time to continue with their next series of attacks on schedule. So, while Lance stayed in his bunk to sleep off the weird, post-cryopod stupor, the rest of them were meeting with Kolivan to finalize the details in the battle plan to retake the next Galra-occupied planet on their list, planet Lam.

 

(The universe didn’t rest, so neither did its Defenders.)

 

Kolivan appeared on the screen. “Greetings, Paladins of Voltron. Princess Allura.”

 

“Greetings, Kolivan,” replied Allura.

 

“The Blade of Marmora understands the Blue Paladin is expected to make a full and rapid recovery.”

 

“Yes, he is,” she answered, with a polite nod. Then--probably because she realized that this acknowledgement was as close to a “get well soon” card that the Blades could muster, she added --“Thank you.”

 

Kolivan glanced at each of the three remaining Paladins. He ended on Pidge.

 

_Are you sure you will be able to circumnavigate their security?_

 

Pidge inhaled sharply. Her fingers dug into the armrests of her chair while she stared directly ahead, trying to keep her face neutral. Kolivan had already returned his attention to Allura and begun the conference. She willed herself to stay calm. It didn't mean anything, she told herself. He’d looked at Keith and Hunk the same way. Kolivan wouldn't give her crap for a mistake-- she wasn't under his command, and he wasn't so petty as to give her the _stink eye_. She was imagining things.

 

_And have you made any progress?_

 

Pidge suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable _\--_ and like she needed to _hide_.

 

She'd crossed the bridge and exited into the hallway, the door snapping shut behind her, before she realized she'd even gotten up. A little surprised, she continued a few more yards before finally stopping. She leaned her back heavily against the wall.  She suspected she should be embarrassed that she'd literally run out of an important meeting, but she was only relieved.

 

The door hissed open to let out Hunk. Spotting her, he joined her against the wall, angling to face her.

 

“You okay?” he asked, quietly.

 

Pidge studied the smooth, unbroken flooring by her feet. Hunk waited, undemanding.

 

She sighed. “Yeah, I'll be fine.”

 

Hunk grunted in neutral acknowledgment and shifted to face the opposing wall. “We can wait to go back in until you think you're ready.” He shrugged. “Or not go back at all-- that's cool, too.”

 

“No,” she said quickly, “I can't just sit out here when I'm supposed to be doing Paladin crap.” But her body didn’t seem to agree with her. It made no move to leave its position.

 

Hunk shrugged again. “Okay. Then just when you’re ready.”

 

Pidge tilted her head back to rest against the wall. She didn't _actually_ know if she had the nerve to go into the bridge again. She would rather run until she was too exhausted to think, and then go hide in her bunk where the only thing to stare at her was the wall.  From the back of her mind, Green poked at her indecision.

 

 _Her Paladin was_ _brave. She could do anything she wanted._

 

But as she got up, Pidge didn't find anything that felt like _bravery_. Instead, she found something heavy and cold.

 

It felt much more like _resignation._

 

She took a deep breath. “I'm ready.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They returned quietly to the conference, filling two of the four empty chairs.

 

(The universe didn't rest, so neither did its Defenders.)

 

Xxxxxxxxxx

 

Their attack on Lam was a complete success.  With both Zalkhamar and Lam now under their control, the Coalition had a strong base from which to continue their advance into Galra territory. Everything had gone perfectly.

 

(Well, _nearly_ perfectly.  Keith broke several of the bones in his hand and fingers with a poorly placed parry--but he didn’t even notice until they were back in the Castle, when the team’s collective storm of adrenaline had tapered into exhaustion.)

 

Xxxxxxxxxxx

 

“So!” said Hunk, dropping his and Pidge’s computers onto the desk with a mildly alarming amount of force. “ As you can see, I started with adding some reinforcement under the outside shell-- because _A_ : Earth gadgets are _flimsy_ , and _B_ : with all this fancy, Altean plastic-y stuff we’ve got, it would be crazy _not_ to.”

 

Pidge made an impressed noise, eyebrows raised, as they pulled up chairs to her desk. Lance filed into the hanger behind them, then flopped onto the floor halfway between the workstation and Green’s paws. He rolled onto his stomach and started fiddling with his tablet. He’d been not-so-subtly following Pidge around for the last several days, like he was trying to prove something to her-- namely, that he was both still alive and still liked her.

 

“The screen is basically the same as the old one,” Hunk went on, “But I added some holoscreen extensions for added viewing and Allura-mimicking ability.” He whoosed his arms around, making Pidge duck.

 

“ _Then_ I put in a better keyboard protector because--I swear, Pidge--you get crumbs _everywhere._ I think I could’ve reassembled an entire cookie from what I found in there.” He pushed the laptop proudly in front of her. “What do you think?”

 

“Very impressive,” she said, pulling it closer and examining the new exterior, “Thanks.”

 

“All in a quintant’s work,” Hunk said, beaming. He turned to his own laptop and started it up.

 

Pidge picked up the computer to look at the bottom and edges (now fully refurbished in Lion-shade green), then opened it and ran her fingers over the new keyboard. From ingrained habit, her index finger landed on the power button.

 

It turned on.

 

She stopped, caught in the screen's subtle glow. An open command line popped up, expectantly, but her hands stayed hovering just above the keyboard. She willed herself to enter something. Nothing happened.

  

There was an unhappy tremor in Green’s mind.

 

Pidge tensely flexed her fingers. She just needed to enter a few characters-- to start doing _anything--_ but the line stayed blank. She closed her eyes against the empty screen, angrily. Why couldn’t she just _think_ of something? She was supposed to be good at this--was she really so fucking _broken_ that she couldn’t even use her _computer?_

 

For a second, Green’s energy swelled--loud and angry and _sad_ \--to fill the hanger. She made no sound, but the mindscape between her and Pidge _shook_. Pidge grabbed for the edge of the table, as if it could save her consciousness from toppling over.

 

Then, just as suddenly, Green retreated into a quieter, pitching worry. A thousand fragmented thoughts were flung at Pidge--that she wasn't broken, that she was the Green Paladin of Voltron, that she was _determined_ and _brave_ and _strong--_

 

Pidge risked a glance over her shoulder at Hunk and Lance. Lance had looked up from his tablet and was quizzically frowning at Green, as if he were trying to localize an annoying buzzing sound. Hunk had swiveled around to do the same. Pidge quickly looked back down at her hands gripping the desk, hoping to pretend her Lion hadn't just had one of the most dramatic emotional outbursts she had ever heard. But-- yep-- Pidge could feel the other Lions on the periphery of her awareness checking in with Green, and from the corner of her eye saw Lance and Hunk both turn to look at Pidge, before pointedly looking at each other.

 

She stared at the green lining around the keyboard.

 

“Hey!” said Hunk, brightly, “I'm designing a new cooling system for the Castle's thrusters with parts that actually still exist-- you know, ‘case the ones we have break down--and I could use a few extra hands to build the prototype. You guys wanna help?”

 

“Sure!” yelled Lance--with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm for what could be considered to be extra work--and sprang to his feet.

 

Pidge loosened her grip on the desk. Almost imperceptibly, her hand shook as she closed the computer.

 

“Sure,” she said, trying to copy their excitement, “That sounds good.”

 

Xxxxxxxxx

 

Over the next two movements, they were able to cut a wide gash into Galra territory, nearly sealing off all Empire access to Olkarion and four other inhabited planets. Although the shutdown of the communication base had given them a few extra quintants to get ahead, each successive battle became incrementally more difficult as the Empire recognized their intentions and scrambled to respond. The last planet targeted in the Coalition’s territory grab was planet Yaash, which supported a military transport hub. While it was naturally uninhabited, the Galra had been reinforcing Yaash as a last stronghold in the area as quickly as travel from the Empire proper would allow. The Coalition anticipated a major skirmish would be necessary to take it.

 

(Pidge didn't try to use her laptop again.)

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you guys see the Keith whump? Hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> (I'm just kidding. It gets worse.) 
> 
> So, fun fact, "Zalkhaamaar" means "annoying" in Mongolian. "Lam" means "arbitrary" in Hmong. Granted, I speak none of these languages and am trusting Google. Does anyone know what "Yaash" means? Hint: it's supposedly Hebrew. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's left comments! I reaaaally love reading and rereading them! Leave me your thoughts, please!


	6. Chapter 6

From a series of recon missions by the Paladins, combined with intel from the Blades’ spy network, they knew the majority of the Galra’s military activity on planet Yaash was coordinated from a large base ship positioned in low orbit. Unfortunately, this ship was now funneling an obscene amount of energy into its shielding system in anticipation of a Coalition attack. So, in the absence of Voltron, if they hoped to do anything besides flail around for the few quintants it would take to wear down the barrier-- all while dodging return fire--the shielding would have to be disabled.

 

Which was why Pidge and Keith were essentially about to fling themselves at it.

 

Pidge held Green steady as the Yellow and Blue Lions raise hell on the far side of the base ship, drawing the majority of the Galra fighters that had been deployed to them. Pidge watched the flurry of Empire and Blade fighters entangling themselves between them and the ship, waiting for a clear path. Keith stood braced by her shoulder.

 

Green was positioned back and out of the fray. Pidge had been able to copy the signature signal the base used to allow their own ships to pass through the shield. With Green's cloaking, they’d be able to sneak through, and then the Green could hide in one of the smaller hangers that wasn't often used. She'd hopefully be unnoticed in the chaos for the time it took Pidge and Keith to gain access to the main computer system and screw up the shielding.

 

Green thrummed with anticipation, funneling her will towards her thrusters. When they flew together, there wasn't much of a delineation between Pidge and Green. Melded like this, they could feel Keith behind the pilot’s chair, a small,  distant red smudge on perpetual Voltron stand-by. Finally a gap opened in the fighting that would point them in the general direction of the hanger they'd picked out.

 

“ _Now!”_ she shouted--for Keith's benefit--and slammed on the controls. Her intention added to Green's, pushing them over threshold, and they rocketed forward.

 

Pidge spun her into a barrel roll to the right around a Blade plane to avoid smashing it, then into one to the left over an Empire plane to avoid blowing their cover. Behind her, Keith grunted and threw his arm around the pilot's chair. The shield grew to fill the viewport, then wrapped around them as they passed through. Pidge yanked Green up-- in a maneuver that sent her stomach towards her ankles and would've definitely made her vomit if she were flying anything but Green-- so that she skimmed through the relatively small space between the shield and the exterior of the ship. Impressively, Keith stayed on his feet.

 

He did, though, have to sidestep a few times when Pidge slammed them into a violent deceleration next to the little hanger. With her false identity signal, the door popped open readily to accept them. The hanger was a snug fit--Green twisted into a crouch to lower her shoulders, then pulled in her hindquarters so the door could close behind them. Pidge deactivated the cloaking as the room repressurized.

 

“We're in!” She shouted over the comms.

 

“Good job, Pidge,” said Allura from the Castle, “We'll hold out out here.”

 

Green lowered her mouth, letting Pidge and Keith disembark. Alarms were blaring, but only to report the attack outside. Pidge set her helmet to display a map of the ship provided by the Blades.

 

Keith led the way through the door that led into the ship, which opened onto one of the many service hallways feeding the base. They took an immediate turn, following a predetermined route to the shipping and receiving sector, which they had guessed would be relatively un-looked-after when the ship was under attack.  They continued quietly through the hallway for several hundred yards, tracing the outer edge of the ship. Occasional doors marked branch points deeper into the base, prompting them both to hover their hands over their bayards as they went. They stopped at a door close to the end, and Keith pressed his hand against the activation panel.

 

Lance gave an enthusiastic _whoop_ in response to some good shot or another. As the door revealed a second, also empty, hallway on the other side, Keith straightened from the attack-ready stance he'd adopted.

 

“ _Some_ of us are trying to focus,” he hissed, “which gets kind of hard with you _screeching_ every few seconds.”

 

“ _Hey!_ My voice is _beautiful_ and we all know it.”

 

Pidge--who was having no problem focusing at all, actually--rolled her eyes and brushed past Keith.

 

This corridor featured a single door, placed halfway between their position and where the corridor turned away in the distance, which Pidge's map indicated as an auxiliary control room for the shipping sector. Keith rejoined her to open it with his hand, and, as hoped, the room was unoccupied. A series of screens and buttons took up the majority of the far wall.

 

“We made it to the control room,” Keith said to the others, taking a guard position by the entrance.

 

Pidge went to the console, connecting her gauntlet to its interface.

 

After a few minutes, she was done.

 

“Got it!” she announced, “The shield will go down in five dobashes!”

 

“Good work--now get out of there!” said Allura.

 

“Going!”

 

They ran out of the control room at a hurried jog. Pidge used the door frame to slingshot herself around, trailing Keith back down the hall. They'd nearly reached the door they’d arrived through when Keith slammed to a stop, throwing his arm out to catch Pidge in the chest.The sound of footsteps came from the other side. They drew their bayards.

 

“We're going to have a delay,” Keith whispered, just as Pidge hissed _“Fucking quiznak.”_

 

The door opened. Keith lobbed himself at the first figures that emerged--a pair of sentries-- cutting one down so that it fell onto the other and pushed it to the wall, leaving Pidge an opening to a second pair that followed. She ripped her blade into the face of the closest one, causing it to careen wildly as it dropped. The other sentry was faster-- Pidge was forced to throw up her shield and brace behind it as it started firing its blaster.

 

Through her shield, over the sentry, Pidge saw a flesh-and-blood soldier come up in the rear of the group. If he had been at all surprised at the sudden shower of sizzling circuitry and booming gunfire, he recovered quickly, reaching to activate the communicator in his helmet--

 

\--as he hurtled all three-hundred-something pounds of himself at Keith.

 

Keith turned from his disemboweled sentries, but his sword had to be moved much more slowly down and back up between him and the wall. The soldier slammed into him, and they fell hard to the ground.

 

Pidge squared herself behind her shield and rushed against the blaster shots. When she was nearly arm’s length from the sentry, she angled her bayard under the shield and shot it out in its grappling-hook form at its leg. She shocked it, and the sentry collapsed in a tangle of electricity.

 

Keith and the soldier were grappling tightly. Keith's helmet had come off and rolled a few feet down the hall, and he was reaching for his bayard where it laid deactivated on the floor. Pidge tried to aim her blade at the soldier, but the constant movement gave no clear shot.The soldier half-pinned Keith, slamming his knee to his shoulder.  Keith twisted to land his free elbow to the Galra's exposed chin. The soldier reared back, and Keith rolled from under him towards the bayard.

 

His hand closed around the handle--

 

\--but the soldier swung its arm, hitting him  in the chest and throwing him in the opposite direction.

 

Keith hit the wall on the other side of the hallway. His shoulder and head struck first with a loud _,_ unnatural _crack._ But the motion left the soldier exposed to Pidge. She launched her blade so it lassoed around his extended arm. She pushed energy into her bayard from every corner of herself that she could find. The soldier fell heavily to the floor, unconscious.

 

Pidge let the electricity run for another tick. And another.

 

(Until she could think again.)

 

The alarms had taken on a more urgent tone-- a repeating airhorn-like sound adding to the sirens. She let her bayard dissipate and turned. Keith lay where he fell, prone.

 

“Pidge? Keith?” asked Allura, “What’s happening?”

 

Keith groaned and shifted his hands by his chest to take weight off his face. Pidge ran to the wall, crouching by his head.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he moaned.

 

He turned his head toward the wall, eyes shut and grimacing, revealing the right side of his head. There was a small well of blood oozing through his hair from the general area of the impact.

 

Pidge tapped on his shoulder. “Keith!”

 

He groaned again. Slowly, he pushed himself up to sit on his knees, wincing.

 

“ _Pidge, Keith--_ status report!” Allura prompted.

 

“He got tossed head first into a wall without his helmet--but he's up,” said Pidge. Her words came out close to jumbled, rammed together by the adrenaline pounding against her veins.

 

“His head is too thick for something like that to slow him down,” said Lance, but his cheery affect sounded somewhat labored.

 

Keith brought his hand up to hover over the bloody area. He squinted at Pidge, then past her at their surroundings. “What happened?”  

 

“You hit your head-- like _really_ fucking hard.” She jumped up to retrieve his helmet, still sitting where it had been shed next to the soldier. As she came back, Keith was unsteadily getting to his feet, using the wall as a brace, only standing up fully to take the helmet.

 

Pidge paused in front of him, watching apprehensively as he tenderly maneuvered the helmet over his head, face screwed up in pain.

 

(A ripple of doubt pushed its way up from the dark heaviness in her stomach.)

 

But there was nothing to worry about, she told herself--Keith was up and moving, it wasn't so bad, and they’d handled injuries a thousand times before. They just needed to find their way back to Green, go back to the Castle, and then Keith could go in a cryopod if he needed it--then it would be fine, then everything would be okay.

 

Simple steps--Pidge could do that. Get to Green, get to the Castle, get to a pod.

 

Simple. Everything would be okay.

 

“We need to move!” she said. She looked back where the patrol had come from-- the direction back to Green and to the rest of the ship. All the reinforcements the soldier called would soon be clogging up their exit. “We need to find another way to Green--and find someplace less exposed.”

 

Keith blinked. “Okay,” he said, slowly. He kept his head still, notably not moving it to nod. Pidge grabbed his arm and tugged him the other way. He stumbled, tipping alarmingly, but caught himself on her.

 

She led them quickly back to the control room. Keith leaned into the activation panel, not letting go of Pidge with his other hand. Pidge followed him in, then quickly shut the door again behind them. Keith used his momentum to cross the little space and leaned against the console, where the screens were flashing along with the air horn, both hands gripping the edge. He stood still, staring at it.

 

He doubled over and vomited. One hand shot down to hold his stomach, but the other stayed clenched to the console, keeping him upright. The retching was picked up by his microphone, underscoring each of the painful reports coming from his throat and gut.

 

“Is he okay?!”  Hunk shouted, before Lance yelled over him in a string of expletives related to the combat outside.

 

With the next few heaves, Keith sank onto his knees.

 

“Well, not _really_ ,” Pidge snapped, “We've been cut off from Green.” She turned away to face the door and opened the map of the base on her gauntlet screen.

 

“Shield is down!” yelled Allura.

 

The ship shook perceptibly.  

 

“Uuuuh,” said Pidge sarcastically, her finger wobbling over her holoscreen, “You guys know we're still _in here_ , right?”

 

“It’s not _my_ fault the things I hit don't spin out-of-control _politely,”_ Lance shouted.

 

She pinpointed their location on the map. The hallway outside the control room led in only two directions. There would be dozens of sentries converging on the soldier they downed-- so their original route was out. There weren’t any side halls or even ventilation ducts that way, either. The other direction led to the shipping receiving areas-- mostly made up of oodles of temporary storage units and a long line of airlocks.

 

Airlocks.

 

The ship rocked _hard._

 

“ _Fuck!”_ she shouted, toppling into an unbalanced squat. She barely kept herself from falling onto her face.

 

“...'Idge?”

 

Pidge almost didn't hear Keith over the alarms. She twisted around. He'd ended up sitting on the metal floor with his back against the console, half in the pool of vomit, having fallen with one arm still extended to the desk rim to catch him.  His other hand was pressed hard against his helmet, as if that were the only thing holding his head in one piece. His breaths were coming in short, frantic pants. His gaze flickered from the flashing screens to her, his brow pinched and eyes squinted.

 

“What's goin’ on?” he asked. There was an odd sound in his voice-- a note of brittle uncertainty, weaving just beneath the surface. A subtext of pain and fear and _wrong_.  It scared Pidge. It scared her more than the angry, strobing lights. More than the blasts that rocked the ship....

 

(Get to Green. Get to the Castle. Get to a pod. She had a plan.)

 

“Things aren't going the way we wanted,” she told him, carefully, holding his gaze. She forced her voice to stay steady.  “But it's okay-- we found another way out.”

 

He blinked, then looked _through_ her, his eyes losing focus. He forced them shut, eyebrows drawn, avoiding the effort of vision. His extended hand drifted down, unnoticed, joining the other on his helmet.

 

“It really hurts,” he whispered.

 

The door beeped.

 

Pidge jumped up and around, drawing her bayard and activating her shield. Blaster fire came through the opening before the door had fully retracted into the ceiling. The shots ricocheted off her shield and sent sparks flying from the walls. Pidge ran forward, ejecting her grappling hook around the shield at the source of the shots. There was an explosion of plasma as a blaster was blown apart.

 

She dropped her shield and whipped the bayard into the sentry standing there, sending it flying to the side. Another replaced it. She used her elbow to knock the muzzle of its gun up and away and retracted her bayard into its blade form, then punched it into the sentry’s belly. The dying robot fell forward onto Pidge as a third sentry pushed from behind. The falling sentry caught her leg and knocked her onto her back. The third started to step around her, dismissing her, pointing its blaster to the back of the room, at Keith--

 

Its face disintegrated into green embers as her bayard hit it in the back of the head. It slammed into the ground with a _clang_ that rang through the small room.

 

Pidge grabbed at the ground and pulled her leg free. She jumped to the door and made it close before anything else could try to come through. These three sentries were unlikely to be the only scouts sent to flush out the intruders. They needed to _move._

 

She turned back to Keith, quickly checking him over. He’d gotten his shield up, and he seemed well covered and unscathed behind it.

 

It took her another second to actually _look_ at him. He’d shoved his side into the console and curled his legs in, forehead to his knees, into as small of a ball he could make himself. His hands were still pushing on his helmet, his eyes screwed shut.

 

“Keith! It’s okay-- they’re gone!”

 

He made no indication he’d heard her. The others were yelling between one another, coordinating strikes, but that only seemed to be scaring him more. Pidge squatted next to him, keeping herself angled between him and the door. She reached around his shield and tapped on his knee.

 

“Keith!”

 

He flinched away, further into the console. The ship trembled again.

 

“Keith, it’s okay--it’s me,” she said, quieter, “ _Please.”_

 

Finally, he lifted his chin over his knees and looked at her with surprised recognition. His shield dissipated.

 

“It’s okay, Keith,” she repeated, _begging_ him to believe her, “We’re getting out of here.”

 

There was an empty beat while he stared at her, processing what she'd said.

 

“Is Shiro comin'?” he asked. The words blended into a legato sludge. “Is he gettin' us?”

 

(No.)

 

The team’s battle chatter paused.

 

Pidge was suddenly empty _\--_ wide, cavernous. Her body sucked in a breath, like it could fill her up with air. She couldn't hear the warnings of the alarms anymore.

 

She couldn't hear _anything_.

 

And Keith was looking at her, scared and confused, like a lost child.

 

(They were just two lost children.)

 

...Allura yelled a direction to Hunk, and the chatter resumed.

 

(Get to Green. Get to the Castle. Get to a pod.)

 

She exhaled.

 

“Yeah, man,” she lied, “He's on his way. Everything's going to be okay.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art by the amazing 91939art.](https://91939art.tumblr.com/)
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> Don't point a weapon at Pidge's friend when she's having a bad day.
> 
> Shout out to everyone who's left a comment! I reaaaaaaaally love getting them, so tell me what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

 

Keith sighed-- a relieved, hysteric sound-- and pinched his eyes shut again.

 

Pidge swallowed.

 

“I need to check your armor, okay?” she said.

 

He didn’t answer. She grabbed his forearm and pried a couple fingers from his helmet. He let the arm go slack and let her extend it to her. She opened his gauntlet screen, maneuvering through the readouts of his suit. No breaches from the hit against the wall. Environmental control uncompromised.

 

“Keith! Put your visor down,” she commanded.

 

He stayed huddled around himself. She put her hand to his face and flicked at his chin. He jerked away, grimacing, but it had the intended effect-- the visor sealed shut to block her.

 

“Okay, we gotta move.”  She sidled next to him and pulled his surrendered arm over her neck. She shoved her hand through the gap between him and the console left beneath his elbow and grabbed around his waist. When she lifted, he complied, willing enough to allow her to drag him to standing. He leaned on her heavily, but with the help, he stayed on his feet. He kept his other hand against his head and his eyes closed.

 

Pidge yanked him to the door, carefully avoiding the ruins of the sentries.

 

“Guys!” she yelled to the comms, “We're going out the airlocks-- there's some really close.”

 

“Copy that, Pidge!” answered Coran.

 

She leaned down and pressed Keith's hand against the activation panel. She stuck her head out the door, quickly checking for approaching Galra, then turned them away from the way they'd come, towards the shipping area proper. They moved slowly, each footfall requiring dedicated attention. The toe of Keith's boot kept catching on the floor, and Pidge would have to take nearly all of his weight to encourage him to take another step. Each time the ship shook, Pidge froze to keep them stable.

 

They'd just made it to the turn in the hallway when Pidge heard the door on the other end open.

 

“Goddamnit.”

 

The shipping area consisted of a long corridor lined with airlocks on one side. The first began only a few feet in front of them, its clear window extending several yards. Pidge flung herself at its control panel, dragging Keith’s arm with her and shoving his hand against it. She twisted and dropped him under the glass as it retracted into the ceiling, and he hit the ground, without catching himself, with a startled grunt.

 

A blaster beam shot close past Pidge’s head. She dodged into the airlock after Keith. In the same movement, she drew her bayard and embedded it in the control panel on their side.The door fell back down, gunfire barraging the glass. She bent down to grab Keith under his armpits and dragged him to the bay door that pointed into black space. She juggled him around so he faced her on his knees and slung each of his arms around her neck and shoulders. She wrapped her arms under his jetpack and held him close, their chest plates clacking together. There was a series of denying beeps, announcing an attempt to open the first door through the ruined computer.

 

“Keith!” Pidge shouted.

 

He opened his eyes, slowly. His line of sight landed on the mob of sentries that had gathered outside. One punched a fist against the glass.

 

“Keith--listen to me! We're going out the airlock! You've gotta hold on, okay?”

 

Another punch.

 

He leaned his forehead on her shoulder. He tightened his arms around her neck--just a little, just enough for her to hope that maybe he'd understood. Pidge reached for the thread that extended out from back of her mind.

 

_Green!_

 

Keith flinched as a crack zigzagged through the glass, but he only squeezed closer against her. Pidge took the thread and made it wide-- poured as much as herself into it as she could. Enough of herself to make Green _move_.

 

She freed one hand, summoned her bayard--

 

_Green Green Green Green Green!_

 

\-- and slammed the blade into the window.

 

The glass shattered, its structure compromised, giving in to the vacuum outside. Pidge's feet scraped along the floor for a fraction of an instant before losing contact completely.  Then there was only motion-- too uncontrolled to be flying, and blood rushing to all the wrong places to be falling. An outward force pulled on her legs, her arms, on Keith. She concentrated to deactivate her bayard and fold her arm in. She braced her forearm between his shoulder blades and up his neck. Flashes of the ship, the planet, the explosions of the battle whipped past in a confused blur.

 

Green’s mind enveloped Pidge an instant ahead of her mouth. Green angled up and twisted around them. They landed on their sides--hard-- at the top of her mouth, pulled down by her artificial gravity. Every part of Pidge's body tingled in diffuse pain from the impact. Shakily, she extracted her arms from around Keith and pushed herself to standing--

 

\--and fell right over again as something threw Green sideways. Pidge felt the sting of a droid ship slamming into Green's flank. She caught Keith’s shoulder before he could slide into her. Another, more purposeful laser strike hit Green’s neck.

 

“ _Shit_ ,” Pidge yelled, “Can I get some _cover?”_

 

“Pidge-- you're like _right_ in the middle of them,” said Lance.

 

“We’ll do our best!” Allura shouted.

 

Pidge grabbed Keith's arm.  “C’mon, man,” she encouraged. She tried to pull him to his feet, but he didn't make any attempt to stand from where he'd landed, curled on the floor. She again grabbed him under the arms and dragged him into the cockpit.

 

At the front, Pidge reached for the button that acted as a shortcut to activate the cloaking, but a blast from the base ship struck Green in the back, throwing Pidge into the console. Keith fell from her grip and loosely collapsed, the side of his helmet clipping the pilot’s chair. She mashed her hand against the button, and felt the cloaking through Green as it draped across them like a thin, smooth blanket. Pidge urged Green to turn in towards the ship--to follow close along its side where few of the other planes were flying. She pushed herself into the pilot seat and dragged Keith so he was positioned between the chair and the console. She wedged his shoulders between her knees to hold him in place, then grabbed the controls.

 

She wrapped Green under the ship and away from the battle. When they'd cleared the base’s underside, she angled towards the brown-gray planet below-- something _stable_. She aimed for a point a few dozen miles from the Galra ground facilities and picked out a mountainous ridge that jutted above the surrounding landscape. They landed among a few short, rocky slopes that reached just past Green's shoulders.

 

Pidge stared at the cliffs in Green’s viewport, breathing heavily. For a numb second, she was stunned by the sudden calm. She could hear the distant crashes and booms of explosions that had faded into little pops. She felt Green under her hands… she felt Keith against her feet….

 

(Get to Green. Get to the Castle. Get to a pod.)

 

Pidge reached for Green's console and brought up readouts from her scanners.

 

Galra and Blade fighters shot in and out of one another--boiling like a cloud of flies in a thick layer around the main ship above them and over the planet surface. More Galra had been deployed since the shield went down. The cloud extended out into more open space, where it was punctuated by the paths of the Blue and Yellow Lions. The screen lit up with periodic bright dots that marked an exploding drone plane or a blast from the ship’s artillery.

 

The Castle was a blip on the far side of the chaos, battling as hard as the Lions with its massive, short-range lasers. Pidge didn't see any safe way through. She didn't think she could navigate the dogfight without being smashed to pieces. And, even if she could, the forces of every feint and corkscrew would be extra stress on Keith.

 

“I need a clear path to the Castle!” she yelled, clenching her hands around the control sticks. “Keith’s not doing so good-- he needs a pod!”

 

Hunk’s voice popped up from the Yellow Lion.  “Wait, how bad are we--” He was interrupted by a series of sharp thuds “-- _dang it!”_

 

“That's going to be a _bit_ difficult,” said Coran, “It may be awhile before we can thin out their defenses!”

 

“ _God damn it_ ,” Pidge glanced down at Keith. All she could really see was the back of his helmet, which was now leaning on her knee. The red energy composing him was tinged with an unfamiliar _,_ milky _haze._

 

( _Get to the Castle. Get to the Castle. Get to the Castle.)_

 

Desperation spilled its way up her throat and out her mouth.

 

“ _No--_ you _have_ to make a way through! I need to take Keith to the Castle-- he's getting _worse!_ ”

 

This wasn't a part of her plan. And what the hell did she have if she didn’t have a plan?

 

“I’m sorry, Pidge! We’re trying!”

 

And, God, Coran did sound so _sorry_ \--but the logical part of Pidge wasn’t keeping up with the rest of her.

 

“Then try _harder!”_ she snarled.

 

The conversation was interrupted by even more shouting-- Allura telling Coran to aim for specific canons that had started firing from the ground. Pidge yelled wordlessly in frustration, squeezing harder onto the controls. Green shifted deeper into her place between the ridges with unease. She grappled for something-- _anything_ \-- to do next. She couldn’t just sit there, waiting-- pieces of her would crack apart, fall away, break open.

 

She moved her palms to Keith’s shoulders, instead. She pushed him forward to free herself from the chair, and lowered herself to her knees beside him. His face was lax, no longer twisted in pain.

 

She tried to speak gently, but her voice was strained, even to her ears. “Hey, Keith, can you open your eyes for me?”

 

His eyelids _maybe_ twitched a little.

 

She grabbed his hand. “Come on, _please!”_

 

Nothing.

 

She changed her grip, squeezing his fingers so they pinched the wrong way, enough to be painful. This time, he tried to pull the hand away from her, grunting, and Pidge had to catch him from falling over. He lifted his other hand as if to fight her off, but it didn’t make it past his navel. His eyes blinked open for a second, without focus, then closed again.

 

Pidge ducked her head, trying to bite back the panic screaming through her--seeping from her and into Green, filling the cockpit. Her mind butted against Keith’s, unstable and anxious, but the red remained blurry and insubstantial.

 

Pidge dropped his hand. She opened her gauntlet computer and held it in front of him. Its medical scanners booted, connecting to his suit’s signals to boost their strength. The screen showed a ghostly, black-and-white image of his chest cavity. White, long fingers made up his ribs, and a pale outline made up his lungs. His heart pulsated top- bottom, top-bottom, top-bottom in its Sisyphean goal to keep him alive. Its motion was tracked in a ribbon across the top of the display.

 

She swiped the video feed up, to his head. Keith's skull was a case of solid, gleaming white. Unbroken. But it hadn't protected his brain--it hadn't been the defense it was meant for. Blood was leaking from an artery that wound from the major fold on the right of his cortex, forming its own space between the brain and skull-- separating them with layer after layer of pooling and clotting and pooling again.

 

Translated numbers flashed down the side of Pidge's screen. Rates, counts, pressures. She couldn't assign meaning to most of them, but some were changing--his heart rate lowering, his blood pressure rising. Another pressure, the pressure inside his skull, was steadily going up. The program flagged it in a cheery, blinking red.

 

The blood was pushing against all the tissue it could find. And his skull--the strength that was supposed to protect--was unyielding, so the blood pushed against his brain, instead.

 

And more blood was coming (top-bottom top-bottom top-bottom).

 

The pressure was climbing.

 

Pidge’s finger fell to the bottom of her screen.

 

It would find any outlet it could, crushing lower and lower--

 

Green shuddered, both around Pidge and in her head.

 

\--until it reached his brainstem, where his lungs were told to breathe, where his body was told to _live--_

 

Green roared.

 

\--and his heart kept trying to keep him alive.

 

_(Top-bottom top-bottom top-bottom.)_

 

Making no progress.

 

_(Top-bottom top-bottom top-bottom.)_

 

Inadequate.

 

_(Top-bottom top-bottom top-bottom.)_

 

Failing.

 

Failing its most important purpose.

 

Pidge dropped the screen and grabbed Keith's shoulders. She pulled him to her, both of them leaning over his lap, like she could keep him with her if she just clutched him close enough. She wrapped around him in a clunky, one-sided embrace. She heard herself sobbing. Tears were coming, unheeding of how much she might want them not to.

 

“Keith… I'm sorry.”

 

“-- _Pidge!_ C’mon, dude, what's going on down there?!”

 

Lance's voice came from her helmet, woven with blasts and crashes. He was earnest, like they'd tried more than once to get her attention.

 

Keith's body weighed heavily on her, limp, straining her arms, pulling on her back. The red cloud drifted around her. Loose, unguided, and unreachable.

 

“His… his head is bleeding--on the inside,” Her voice cracked. “Guys, we need to get through--” she clung harder, “It's pressing on his brain… Guys, he's going to _die…_ ”

 

The shouting over the comms had become more intense. More desperate. Green pressed closer into Pidge.

 

“Just…just hold on,” Coran urged. Quietly, brokenly.

 

Saying it out loud made it worse-- confirmed everything. She was all Keith had, and she couldn't do anything to help him.

 

 _(Top-bottom top-bottom top-bottom_.)

 

She dug her face into his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she whispered

 

(No.)

 

A piece of Keith's mind changed. It hardened--wrong, warped-- like concrete. Pidge pulled back, startled. The concrete spread-- out and out to the edges of the red.

 

His mind _jolted_. Hard pieces crystallized into jagged stalagmites that jutted out from him and beyond Green's cockpit. His breathing ripped in a grinding, ragged inhale.

 

The others became a stream of clamored shouts.

 

“The Red Lion has left its hanger!”

 

“It's trying to get to the surface!”

 

“Holy _shit!”_

 

“ Pidge! What happened?”

 

Under his eyelids, Keith's eyes rolled up and to the side. His neck craned back to follow. An awful choking noise came from his throat.

 

(No. No. No. No. No.)

 

“ _Pidge!”_

 

His whole body went stiff, arching into an unnatural position against the base of the seat. Pidge scrambled back to make room for where his legs extended at an awry, abnormal angle. His hands curled into flexed claws at his sides.

 

He started convulsing.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten the impression that a large part of this fandom believes a concussion is the worst non-skull-crushing head injury you can get. 
> 
> (It's not. It's really not.) 
> 
> Kudos are like staying up late. Comments are like getting to sleep in after. 
> 
> Thanks for all the comments, y'all! It's amazing to get feedback from encouraging real-live people!


	8. Chapter 8

 

The red was boiling.

 

Keith's mind moved in disorienting swells and troughs. It slammed in and around Pidge and Green's shared consciousness with huge, penetrating force. The Red Lion was a terrifying, fiery point of anger slowly burning closer and closer, indiscriminately destroying everything in her path.

 

Muscles across Keith's body shook in asynchronous jerks. He pitched sideways as the tone in his torso unbalanced, and he clattered to the ground at Pidge’s feet. His legs leveraged against the console, smashing his helmet on the floor and the pilot’s chair.

 

Pidge jammed her hand between him and the chair, frantically trying to make the smashing stop. She pinched one hand under his arm and grabbed the back collar of his armor with the other. He almost pulled himself out of her grip.

 

She heaved Keith around the side of the chair, fighting the resistance of his body. In the relatively clear area behind the pilot's seat, she lowered him onto his back as far as she could, but he ripped from her hands to fall the last few inches. His mouth was open, his eyes half lidded and rolled into his head,  pulling his face into something that was both still recognizably Keith--her friend, her family-- and too awful to possibly be Keith at all.

 

There was a horrible sound of air laboring to pass strained vocal cords. Pidge dropped to undo the clasps on his chestplate, fighting around his arms. She stripped it off and threw it to the back of the cockpit like it had attacked him. She watched his chest--she could see it rising and falling, but the choking noises continued.

 

“Pidge? What’s happened?” Coran yelled.

 

Pidge fell back, sitting heavily on the floor. She stared at Keith as he kept shuddering. She felt tears running off her face.

 

“He’s… he's having a seizure.”  

 

No one answered. There was nothing to say--they were already trying their best, and Pidge was on her own. She curled herself against the storage compartments tucked into the wall, removing her body as another object he could hurt himself on.

 

Red's mind groped across the remaining distance to find her Paladin-- desperately reaching and grasping at the churning and rolling. It jolted as she was hit by canon blasts and as she slammed into planes, enemy and friend. She refocused with piercing intensity after each impact, drawn by the ravenous need to be with her Paladin, even as her own body accumulated damage dangerously. Pidge felt small, like she was crumbling around the sickly heaviness in her gut that was gradually overtaking more and more of her, piece by piece. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but wait.

 

Wait, and hope.

 

...Hope the seizure would stop soon, and hope Keith would still be breathing when it did. Hope the others could outpace the growing pressure in his head. Hope that, somehow, impossibly, everything could still turn out okay...

 

But hoping hadn't saved anyone before. It hadn't saved Dad and Matt. It hadn't saved Shiro. Hope was useless.

 

Keith’s choking continued, going through seconds and on to minutes. Green's cloaking dissipated in a silent shimmer, expired. The ground shook as Red landed-- hard and unsteadily-- next to Green, and she stepped close so the Lions stood shoulder to shoulder. Her presence was marred with the sharp smell of ash and char, Green's with rot and decay. She disintegrated the few enemy planes that had the reckless audacity to fly too close to their little ravine in blasts of undirected fury.

 

Pidge only watched. And she cried.

 

Finally-- _finally_ \-- the red around her started to calm. Slowly, the haze from before returned, creeping from one side of Keith's mind to the other. He became more and more still as it spread. It was thick, muddied, unmoving-- even more awful than before. It was marred with an opacity that felt heavy on her skin and tasted fetid on her tongue. Pidge crawled back to Keith, scraping her armor across the floor. She could see his chest still rising and falling under his suit. She grabbed his fingers and bent them.

 

This time, he didn't move.

 

Pidge sagged to the floor. She curled down against her knees, burying her face in her forearms. The tears that had stuck to her face began dripping onto the inside of her visor and the metal of the floor. Each drop hit with a soft little _tap_.They counted out all the things beyond her reach. All the people that she'd loved and let down.

 

 _Tap_.

 

Dad. Matt. Shiro. And now, Keith, who was dying right in front of her and she couldn’t do a _fucking thing_ about it.

 

 _Tap_.

 

All the times she'd failed.

 

Red’s mind and body shuddered with searing dread, pain, despair. Pidge turned her head to look at Keith, his face only a few inches from hers. He was calm, now, like she had only caught him sleeping late into the morning, giving away none of all that had gone so wrong.

 

“I’m sorry, Keith,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

 

She was apologizing to Keith. She was apologizing to _everyone._  Because she was nothing, when everything mattered. She was useless, when the people she loved needed her.

 

“...I’m so sorry.”

 

She took his hand in hers and pulled it between her chest and the floor. She held it close.

 

Suddenly, Green pressed around her--a formidable, obstinate force that sparked through Pidge’s nerves. _No,_ she willed to her, _Her Paladin was wrong. She wasn't nothing. She hadn't failed._

 

Pidge pulled away from Green--hunched into herself. But she was going to lose someone else, she thought back. Someone who had counted on her.

 

But Green pulled her back, unfurling her, refusing to be ignored. _But she_ _had always kept going. Kept trying._

 

The air around Pidge tingled with an insistent energy that felt old, ancient... and _alive_. It came with the sound of wind spinning through the leaves of some faraway, otherworldly forest.

 

_She had never given up._

 

Green hummed through Pidge, commanding and grounding. Comforting and empowering. Her presence was tempting, impossible to resist. Pidge leaned into it. She dug into Green, a network of roots anchoring into earth.

 

_She was brave and determined and strong._

 

Pidge loosened her grip on Keith and braced her hands flat against Green's metal beneath her. She felt the electricity coursing through Green to her body to her mind to her essence to her soul and back again in a continuous circuit. The Lion’s power, intrinsically bound to her, filled her to the brim and nested in, the complement to her own.

 

It willed her to stand, to fight back, to rise. It reminded her that she _could._

 

(Because she always had.)

 

_Would she give up, now?_

 

Pidge lifted her head from the floor.

 

...No.

 

(Because she had never let anything stop her before.)

 

_Would she stop trying?_

 

No.

 

No, she wouldn't.

 

She wouldn't just accept that her friend was going to die.

 

(She had never just _accepted_ anything.)

 

Pidge pushed herself upright to sitting. She reached under her visor and cleared her vision of the stains of tears and snot.

 

_She had done great things.Things that others had said were impossible._

 

This could just be another puzzle to be solved-- a solution to be found. What would she do if all the resources she could hope for were at her disposal? What would happen on Earth? What did she need, and how could she work backwards to use what she had? She looked around the cockpit, running through a mental inventory of everything tucked behind each panel and console. Pidge didn’t know how to save Keith… but she hadn’t _known_ how to question, defy, pilot, or defend the universe, either.

 

She could do this.

 

She just had to keep thinking...

 

She just had to keep _trying_...

 

(She had an idea.)

 

_She was her Paladin._

 

She was the Green Paladin of Voltron.

 

And nothing could stop her from trying.

 

“Guys!” she called.

 

The others quickly fell quiet, leaving an open and attentive silence.

 

“I'm going to let the pressure out.”

 

Allura took a deep, steadying breath. “Good luck, Pidge," she said, "We believe in you.”

 

Pidge stood up.

 

She rushed to the back of the room and opened the compartment where emergency supplies were stowed. At the top was a stash of rehydration pouches, formulated like human sports drinks. She grabbed several, tossing them into a pile at Keith’s head.

 

She came back and kneeled next to him. She started her gauntlet computer and configured it to run a constant three-dimensional scan of Keith’s head,  routed to display on her helmet feed. Carefully, she swung one leg up and straddled Keith, keeping her weight on the ground and off his lungs. She placed her knees on each of his upper arms to pin him in place.

 

_She was brave._

 

Pidge looked down at her own thighs, already strained and shaking from the exertion of her position. Her legs, her core, her arms-- all were exhausted from hauling Keith through the ship and the cockpit. Her fingers quivered with a fatigued tremor. The Red Lion pushed into the green mindscape between Pidge and Green. She pulled at the pain and weariness and stretched it to share between the three of them.

 

The shaking stopped.

 

_She was determined._

 

Pidge cautiously took off Keith's helmet. She turned his chin, exposing the right side of his head.

 

She summoned her bayard.

 

She concentrated on the narrow point on the side of her blade, by her pinky. The energy between Pidge, Green, and Red flowed into its tip. They made it a little hotter, a little sharper, a little more a piece and extension of them all. Existence narrowed to the point of the blade, the video feeding to her helmet, the pooling just under Keith's skull. She turned off her comms.

 

_She was strong._

 

Pidge lowered her bayard to Keith’s head.

 

 

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Behind his temple, below his ear, through hair. Where the skin was torn from the point of impact. The first cut met bone, unresisted by muscle or fat. The tiny vessels feeding skin were burnt shut, and there was almost no blood.

 

Small, impossibility small movements between slice and scrape cleared away enough tissue to work, a few inches across. The air was overwhelmed with the sweet, putrid smell of burning hair and skin, disturbed only by the sharp hissing and spitting of evaporating moisture.

 

The bone bled more. An opened fluid pack became a second tool, washing away constantly accumulating blood and char in a small stream.  Progress was cautiously slowed as the carved depression inched deeper and deeper and closer and closer.

 

A film, like paper, lined the inside of the skull. It bulged into the opening that had been made, pushed outward by the gelatinous, ruddy-red clot it held in. It cut off easily. A bleb of blood oozed up from behind and rinsed away.

 

Pieces and clumps came out with each pass of heat and water. Through an entire solution pack. Through another. A stream dripped down his hair, collected in a pink puddle, pooled around her knees.

 

More and more and more.

 

Until she saw dips and ridges of brain.

 

And more.

 

Clot dislodged from deep under the bone,  and fine lines of still-wet blood joined it. Then, there was only still-wet blood. Then, the stream ran clean. The bayard was set aside.

 

Slowly, very slowly, numbers reported into the helmet plateaued. Slowly, very slowly, they reversed direction as nervous tissue indiscernibly expanded. Slowly, very slowly, the red cloud of fire became more solid.

 

Pidge had almost emptied the seventh pack when Keith moved.

 

Xxxxxxxxxx

 

Keith's right arm shifted. It was a small motion--more of a twitch than a jerk--that Pidge only felt because she was sitting on his bicep.

 

She snapped the rehydration pack away.

 

“Keith?”

 

The eyelid Pidge could see fluttered minutely. His pulse and blood pressure began creeping up, and Red’s mind pushed against him with sudden urgency. He made a quiet, pained whine through his lips.

 

“Hey, man, are you with me?"

 

Keith's eyes opened, sluggishly, and they roved unseeing at the wall ahead. He blinked, his eyelids dragging even as he more and more desperately tried to keep them up.

 

“Keith--”

 

He made a breathy, awful sound that tried to be a scream. He tugged at his arm with unexpected force, and the muscles in his neck spasmed to try to turn his head. Pidge dropped the used pouch to the floor. She caught his forehead before he could get it up, palm inches from the hole she'd burned into it, and tangled her other hand in the hair at the top of his neck.

 

“Don't move, you'll make it worse-- it's okay, Keith, it's okay--”

 

His abdomen bucked ineffectively as he tried to move, to free himself-- to protect himself from whatever was making him _hurt_. The cries, the struggling, the gasping got worse as he realized he couldn't.

 

“Shit,” Pidge swore. She bent over, balancing warily between keeping him pinned and getting herself in his line of view. His eyes darted in muddled terror, quickly sliding into panic.

 

“Keith, it’s me, Pidge!”

 

The Red Lion converged on him in a scorching wave of heat, abandoning Pidge completely. For an instant, she felt a glimpse of the warm and comforting familiarity that Red imposed on him--and the intense insistence of _safety._ Keith’s gaze froze. He focused on Pidge’s face in front of him with a brief light of recognition.

 

“You're with me-- it's okay, it'll be okay.”

 

He blinked again, and tears rolled sideways out the corners of his eyes.

 

“It's okay, it's okay-- I'm here, Red's here-- it's okay....”

 

But if he was any less scared, it didn't trump the animal need to make the pain _stop_. He pulled again on his head, then at his shoulders. He started to tug at the armor on her back, but her weight on his upper arms and shoulders kept his hands too far away to put any strength behind them.

 

“I'm sorry--I know it hurts,” Pidge whispered, voice catching, “It's okay…”

 

She stayed--even as Keith desperately tried to curl in around his head, even as his screams got louder and louder and closer to real screams. She bent down as far as she could to put her face directly in front of his. Her attempts at comforting words devolved into murmurings of “it's okay, it's okay,” over and over that blurred together as she cried with him. Green stayed, too-- a constant pressure on Pidge's body, keeping her steady.

 

But, eventually, his struggling slowed as he became too exhausted to keep going.  Eventually, his screaming quieted into soft moans while the pain became just a background horror that Red did her best to siphon away.

 

And--eventually-- Pidge moved her legs off his arms. She let herself roll sideways and onto her back, pulling both of his hands with her. Her helmet lay back in the pink puddle surrounding them. She kept crying-- from exhaustion, from the shadow of fear, from relief. Green wrapped her in an expanse of green that rumbled with contented joy and pride.

 

 _She was so strong_.

 

Pidge turned on her comms.

 

“Guys.”

 

The team assaulted the frequency with a tangle of shouts of her name and a barrage of questions that Pidge couldn't quite parce apart.

 

“He's going to be okay,” she said instead, cutting through them.

 

She turned her head to Keith, who was looking back at her with quiet enervation.

 

“I did it.”

 

_So, so strong._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art by the amazing 91939art.](https://91939art.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> *I am not a licensed neurosurgeon, and you probably aren't, either--so don't try this at home.*
> 
>    
> Pidge: Everything is awful and I suck.
> 
> Green: Get in, loser, we're saving the day.
> 
>  
> 
> Oh my God, you guys, thanks so much for all of your kind words-- it means so much to me. Thank you to everyone who's commented, and thank you to everyone who's been reading. Please tell me your thoughts!


	9. Epilogue

Pidge got up and went back to the emergency supplies. Keith tracked her movement with his eyes. She came back with a patch that sealed against his skin and removed the immediate worry that he'd end up jabbing at the wound. She laid down again, cradling Keith's head out of the water and blood.

 

It took nearly another forty dobashes for the battle to turn definitively in Voltron's favor, then yet another varga for it to thin out enough for someone to safely deliver them to the Castle. Even then, it was Hunk and Yellow, with all of their reinforced armor, that were sent down to the planet surface.

 

Green allowed Hunk into the cockpit, and he managed to look horrified at the sight of them for only a tick before gently folding Keith into his arms. Pidge followed them into Yellow, where they strapped Keith into the pop-out passenger seat behind the pilot's chair. She was tasked with holding him steady any time they were forced to make a less-than-smooth maneuver. As they exited Red’s immediate mental range, Keith made a small whimper of distressed loss.

 

Coran met them in Yellow’s hanger, and Keith was limply passed off to him. Hunk left again to finish the attack, while Pidge went with Coran to the infirmary to help where she could. When they finally had Keith tucked safely into a pod, Coran flashed her a warm, soft smile before turning to the displays.

 

A couple vargas later, Pidge was taken back to Green with Lance, and the three remaining Lions towed Red out of the atmosphere and to the Castle, now hovering nearby.

 

In her hanger, Pidge took an extra second before getting up from Green's seat. Green purred to her, a sensation that reached Pidge's core. She squeezed the controls, and let herself feel lines of bark, expanses of grass, blankets of canopy, the warmth of life....

 

She stopped at her desk on her way out.

 

Pidge changed out of her armor, then returned to the med bay where everyone would naturally gather. She was the last to arrive--Hunk and Allura were huddled on the steps in front of Coran. Lance stood by Keith's pod, staring into it with a dark expression. As soon as he saw Pidge approaching out of the corner of his eye, though, he slapped on a devilish smirk and turned to her with an eyebrow curled.

 

“He's going to have a bald spot, isn't he?”

 

Coran shooed Lance away, admitting that, yes, Keith would likely have a hairless patch for a time. He briefly explained that the pod would need nearly a movement to do its work-- to fix injury done, to prevent further damage, and to coax tissues that didn't usually heal themselves to do so anyway.

 

Without discussion, the group began absently settling for a week-long sit-in. Hunk pulled out a pair of cots while he chatted with Coran about the weird social tendencies of the Zalkhamarans.  Allura pulled up a video schematic of the battle on a screen she conjured out of the floor and started pointing out the finer details of the flight patterns to Lance as if they were in a normal meeting on the bridge.

 

Pidge planted herself cross-legged in the center of the floor, directly in line of sight of Keith's pod. She set down the newly green-plated laptop that she'd carried from the hanger.

 

She started her computer and opened the footage of the rebel prison break.

 

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

_“Hope” is the thing with feathers -_

_That perches in the soul -_

_And sings the tune without the words -_

_And never stops - at all -_

 

_And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -_

_And sore must be the storm -_

_That could abash the little Bird_

_That kept so many warm -_

 

_I’ve heard it in the chillest land -_

_And on the strangest Sea -_

_Yet - never - in Extremity,_

_It asked a crumb - of me._

 

\--Emily Dickinson.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End. 
> 
> Thanks to every one of you for reading this work, and thank you for your comments, your kudos, and general support.
> 
> This work came out wonderfully, and writing it ended up being very helpful for me. Through the mental health system, I've come to understand that I need to take pride in the things I've done. Like what happens here to Pidge, it's too easy to write off our successes in the face of our failures. So, if you liked this story, please leave kudos, post it on tumblr, recommend it to your friends-- and shout about it from the rooftops or something…. Because I'm *really fucking proud of this work*, and I want the world to see it.


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